The Poison Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  “The fact you are squinting so hard your eyes are nearly closed.”

  She considered denying the fact but said, “Why don’t you tell me what is in this report?”

  He thought a moment as though considering the request. “Very well. First, the child’s blood is full of antivenom.”

  “That’s not possible. He was asymptomatic upon arrival. I expressly decided he did not need antivenom. It’s in his chart. Who authorized he be given the serum?”

  Emre blushed for the second time in as many minutes. “I never said he was given anything.”

  “But the antitoxin, the antivenom . . .?”

  “It appears it was already in his blood.”

  Fatima looked around, found a lab stool behind her, and sat. “What are you saying, Emre?”

  Behind his thick glasses, the hematologist’s eyes were exaggerated, giving him a frog-like appearance. He ran a hand through his hair, producing a snowstorm of dandruff. “I’m saying the child’s blood already had the antivenom. Did you ask his parents if . . .”

  “If he had already been inoculated? Don’t be silly. They are simple peasants. Both denied ever being in a hospital before. Besides, if the boy had already been treated, why would they bring him here? It makes no sense.”

  Emre gave a humorless chuckle. “If you think that makes no sense, wait until you hear the rest.”

  “Which is?”

  “I was curious, so I ran a few more tests.”

  “And?”

  “Among other immunities are those to neurotoxin such as, say, a cobra might have; scorpions; venomous spiders; arsenic; and a number of herbal poisons such as nightshade, hemlock, or wolfsbane. I started to test for immunities to a number of diseases, but that starts to get expensive.”

  It took Fatima nearly a minute to absorb what she had heard. “Neurotoxin? I don’t think there are any cobras in Turkey. And arsenic?”

  “A tolerance for arsenic can be acquired by building up an immunity in small doses, which can be easily detected in the blood. Or, for that matter, the hair.” He shook his head. “But as to the neurotoxin . . .”

  “What you are telling me is quite impossible, you know.”

  “Perhaps. When I was growing up along the coast here, my family were fishermen. There were stories . . .”

  Now Fatima was shaking her head. “Stories? About sea monsters, ghost ships, and giant squid, no doubt.”

  “Those, too. Fishermen are a superstitious lot. But the tales I had in mind were about a family that lived along the coast here a long time ago, a family that had some sort of immunity.”

  “Immunity to what?” Fatima demanded.

  “Just about everything or, at least, to known poisons.”

  “And you think this child is one of them?”

  “Fatima, I don’t know what to think. All I know is the blood of this child is as full of antidotes, antitoxins, and immunities as kuru fasuly is of beans. I do know I’ve never seen anything like it, nor have any of the hematologists I know.” He brightened, a broad smile dividing his face. “Perhaps I could write a paper! Yes! A paper for one of the American medical journals, one I can go to present in the United States. Perhaps even meet Mr. Reilly!”

  Fatima had met Mr. Reilly only once, in Los Angeles when he had interviewed her for her job here. She had expected more of the head of the worldwide Holt Foundation than the rather ordinary-looking man across the table, an American avukat, lawyer. After a few minutes, she had realized there really was little ordinary about him. He had a gaze that seemed to strip her psyche to her very soul, an intensity far greater than she would have guessed was required for a routine hiring of a new doctor in an out-of-the-way hospital nearly halfway around the world and as far from Reilly’s culture as the moon. It was only after a few months at the children’s hospital that she realized Mr. Reilly had an interest in anything relating to the hospital and, presumably, the Foundation.

  He had also seemed to have intuition about people, or at least her. As a first job, she had felt any number of insecurities. Reilly had shown only a calm assurance that she was the right person for the position. She had been surprised before she became accustomed to regular e-mails congratulating her on this or complimenting the way she had handled that.

  In spite of only a single meeting, Fatima regarded Mr. Lang Reilly as a friend, although she knew nothing of him other than his connection to the Foundation.

  “Fatima?”

  Emre was staring at her.

  She came back to the present with a jolt. “I was just trying to think of the best way to make your discovery known,” she lied.

  “Perhaps in America?” he asked hopefully, as though seeking permission.

  “Not for me to say, Emre. But I do think you need to translate your report into English and send it to, to . . . What’s his name, the Foundation’s head of medical operations?”

  “Dr. Walsh. I will send him an English version of my report by e-mail immediately. Later today, I’ll send him a part of the blood sample by DHL with a hard copy of the e-mail. Do you think he will want me to come there, to America?”

  Emre’s expression reminded Fatima of a puppy she once adopted, half-Akbash, half-mongrel, who looked that way when his food bowl was empty.

  “He might, Emre, he might.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Emory University Hospital

  Department of Hematology

  1365 Clifton Road

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Two Days Later

  Tanya was happy to have the job, even if it meant no more than being a glorified maid. The pay was good, the work no harder than pushing a broom and emptying wastebaskets that might contain contaminants, whatever they were. With little Darious outgrowing clothes faster than she could get them from the Goodwill, and Jamal, her baby daddy, insisting on using her EBT card down at the liquor store, there was hardly enough left on it for food, rent, the cell phone bill, or the payments on the flatscreen TV, never mind the money for MARTA to get her from her Section 8 apartment to the Emory campus.

  And there sure wasn’t no money for that medical tech course she had wanted to start since high school. But then she’d gotten pregnant with Darious, and things just spun out of control.

  If Jamal would just get a regular job ‘stead of hanging with the homies in the hood . . . He always had some kind of a deal working, but it never seemed to bring in any money. In fact, he had viewed her job as a real opportunity, what with all the expensive equipment just lying around. “Keep your eyes open,” he had often said, like he thought she could just slip a BMD 025 analyzer the size of a chest of drawers or a 24-tube centrifuge in her purse and walk out the door unnoticed.

  Yep, money was tight, but the joy she got from what she suspected was in her belly kept her mind off it. Too early to be sure, too early to tell Jamal yet, but she was almost certain . . .

  She was in one of the labs, empty except for an Asian man in a white lab coat. Usually the lab techs and the docs cleaned up pretty well after themselves, but today someone had left the room with a job in progress. An ice cart used to preserve blood samples was parked next to a high stool. On the counter in front of the stool was a small centrifuge, a microscope, and a stack of papers that she guessed had come from the red and yellow DHL Express envelope next to it.

  More from curiosity then criminal intent, she parked her broom against the counter and peered down at the papers. At first, she wasn’t certain she was reading the words right. Her second reaction was to remember Jamal’s instructions to keep her eyes open for anything valuable. If she was seeing what she thought she was, somebody might pay a lot of money for that information, a whole lot.

  She looked around the lab. The Asian lab tech in the white coat had his back to her, staring through a microscope. It wasn’t like she was going to steal anything, just borrow a few papers long enough to run them through the Xerox machine down the hall before she brought them right back. They weren’t even marked “confidential” or
anything. And Jamal would know someone who knew someone who might be interested.

  Real interested.

  What was the harm in that?

  CHAPTER 3

  Headquarters of Dystra Pharmaceuticals

  Suite 1720

  One Atlantic Center

  1180 West Peachtree Street

  Atlanta, Georgia

  The Next Day

  William Grassley Stood, hands clasped behind his back, as he studied Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium a few blocks to the southwest from the seventeenth floor.

  “Why,” he asked no one in particular, “do they go to so much trouble to keep up the grass when the football season is months away?”

  “I’d guess it’s easier to keep up than start from scratch,” someone volunteered.

  Grassley turned to treat the other men in the room to a scowl. He had not become CEO of Dystra Pharmaceuticals by guesswork. He believed in keeping your mouth shut if you didn’t know the answer. Keep the old lips zipped until you could find the correct solution.

  He returned to the purpose of the meeting. “Well?”

  “We don’t have a lot to lose,” observed a black man in a pinstriped suit, Ralph Hassler, CFO. “I mean, if the information is anywhere near accurate, it’s worth a hell of a lot more than the five grand the guy wants.”

  “If is the operative word,” observed the man next to him, COO Hugh Wright. “I mean no offense, Ralph, but look at the source: a single welfare mother living in Section 8 housing finds something at Emory, and her boyfriend, a small-time dope peddler, wants five grand because it has to do with some kind of medical breakthrough.”

  Hassler gave him a sideways glance. “You mean a black single welfare mother.”

  Wright sighed. This wasn’t the first time the question of race had sidelined an important decision. He knew Hassler had grown up in Atlanta’s Vine City, a neighborhood of largely white slumlords and poor blacks subsisting in substandard housing. The man had somehow managed not only to thrive in Atlanta’s equally substandard public schools, but win one of the first scholarships to Georgia Tech awarded to a black student. He had majored in chemical engineering and, as a minority, found openings in a number of the country’s premier firms that, like most of America at that time, were hustling to atone for the past sins of Jim Crow and segregation. When he turned to pharmaceuticals, Pfizer snatched him away from Merck, where he had been with a generous salary, bonus, golden parachute, and stock options, and brought him back to the city of his birth. Besides a return to Atlanta, the pot had been sweetened with six weeks of paid vacation and free use of the company’s multiple European and Carribean retreats

  He might be one of America’s leading drug executives, but he never forgot his origins.

  “Black, white, or green,” Wright retorted, “the information hardly comes from an impeccable source.”

  “Just because . . .”

  “Gentlemen,” Grassley interrupted, “let’s look at a few facts. First, if this information is even close to accurate, that someone has discovered anything approaching what this man claims the correspondence says, five grand is nothing. The first company to get FDA approval of such a drug will make Viagra’s revenue look like peanuts. Second, as you know, Dystra Pharmaceuticals has been limping along the last few years, producing generics once a drug’s patent expires along with half a dozen of our competitors. Mere crumbs from the big boys’ table. If we could get our hands on this serum or whatever it is . . . Well, move over Pfizer, get out of the way, Merck. Hell, this could be as big as aspirin.”

  “I suppose we owe our stockholders the effort,” Hassler said.

  “Where is this place?” Wright asked.

  “Somewhere in Turkey.”

  “Turkey?” Wright’s eyebrows knotted. “Didn’t we do business with some group over there sometime back, back when it looked like the FDA might approve a fat pill?”

  Grassley shook his head. “Stupid of us to even think the Feds would okay anything with opium as an ingredient, no matter how small. But, yeah, somebody from, what did they call it?”

  “Gayrimesru,” Hassler supplied. “Mafia world. Turkish mafia. Turks and Kurds. Probably ships more raw opium than anyone else in the world. They’re criminals.”

  Grassley shrugged. “We’re not doing anything illegal, just asking a former contact to gather information for us, verify as much as possible of what we think this report we’re paying five grand to see has to say.”

  “If that’s all,” Hassler asked, “why are we hiring criminals to do it?”

  Grassley’s mouth was a thin line as he sat down at the head of the conference table. “Because I want that formula, serum, or whatever it may be, and I don’t want to go through a lot of international bureaucratic bullshit to get it. Those guys will do whatever it takes. No way we’re going to finish second in this race.”

  “‘Whatever it takes’ embraces a lot of territory,” Wright observed. “I can’t speak for you guys, but personally, I have a strong aversion to going to jail.”

  A sentiment Hassler seconded with a nod.

  “Who said anything about jail? Like they say about Vegas, what happens in Turkey stays in Turkey. We pay these Gayrimesru out of one of our special offshore accounts, one we use to encourage the local politicos to see things our way. Can’t be traced to Dystra.”

  Hassler shook his head. “I don’t know. Those guys would shoot their own mother if the price was right. I’m not sure I want to do business with people like that.”

  Grassley smiled, though there was little humor in it. “A little late for scruples, isn’t it, Ralph?”

  There was no answer.

  CHAPTER 4

  Peachtree Circle and Peachtree Street

  Atlanta, Georgia

  At About the Same Time

  Gurt fuchs was late. her son, Manfred, was about to be released from his first-grade class in less than ten minutes. His school, Westminster, was easily 20 minutes away. That was the problem with one of the city’s most prestigious private schools: it was located in one of Atlanta’s most prestigious neighborhoods at the far end of West Paces Ferry Road, far from the winding streets of quirky and much older Ansley Park.

  At over $19,000 a year, Gurt thought maybe the school might provide bus service, but no such luck. And since she was unaware of any other Ansley Park kids attending Westminster (although most parents here could afford it), there was no carpool, either. At least Lang, Manfred’s father, could take the child most mornings, although doing so was a substantial detour from the route to his downtown office.

  Her irritation level went up a couple of degrees when the light at the intersection turned red just as she reached it. She sat, glaring at the prominently posted NO TURN ON RED signs.

  What she didn’t see were the two men stepping off the curb. Each was carrying a bucket of dirty water and a squeegee.

  Business had been good so far today for Leon Frisch and his pal D’Andre. Two dollars for swiping the squeegee across some housewife’s windshield and demanding two bucks for “cleaning.” With his week’s beard, six-foot height, stained sweatshirt, pants a size too small, and a not entirely feigned wild look in his eyes, most women acted predictably: they clicked the door lock and proffered the two dollars demanded through the crack at the top of the window.

  And why not? These rich bitches in their BMWs and Mercedes would spend more for lunch today than Leon took in in a week. And they didn’t have to sit through a hymn and prayer service for a bed at the Salvation Army shelter at night. Wasn’t the national mood all about “spreading the wealth”? And wasn’t he one of those “hard-working” Americans who needed an even break? After all, the cost of crystal meth kept going up to the point of becoming damn near unaffordable to someone earning an honest living like smearing dirty water across the windshields of expensive SUVs. And the not-so-honest living was getting more and more difficult. At the last convenience store where Leon had planned the old snatch-andrun, the Pakistani man
had come out from behind the counter with the butt of a pistol prominently showing above his belt.

  Leon hadn’t needed the Twinkies and potato chips nearly as badly as he had thought.

  He only dimly remembered the pre-meth days when he had a regular paycheck for minimum wages working with a landscaper. His employer had been less than tolerant of absences that increased in direct proportion to the amount of crank Leon ingested, smoked, or snorted. Once unencumbered by a job, he was free to devote his time to worshipping the great god meth. The same faith had compelled him to forge his mother’s endorsement on her monthly government assistance check, resulting in her ejecting him from the apartment they had shared.

  A job, a roof over his head, regular meals. It all seemed like a half-forgotten dream.

  The light changed, and Gurt was about to put her foot down on the Mercedes 320 CDI’s accelerator when a face appeared in her windshield. Most of the teeth were missing from the open mouth, hair was gone in random patches, and the skin was dotted with festering sores. At another time in another place, Gurt might have thought she was being assaulted by a leper.

  Then she saw the bucket and squeegee.

  The driver’s window of her 320 CDI whispered down. “No, thanks. I’m in a hurry.”

  The squeegee was already leaving a greasy trail across the car’s windshield. Leon pretended not to hear. He guessed after this and maybe one more car, he could find Ralph down at the St. Luke’s soup kitchen and score a teenager, a sixteenth of albino poo, to see him through the night.

  Gurt mumbled a few Teutonic curses, snatched her purse from the passenger seat and opened her wallet. It would be quicker to pay this bum than argue with him. Plus, no way she wanted to come within range of his breath. Those sores just might be contagious.

  Shist! Only a twenty. Good luck in asking for change.

  By now the man had finished, and oily rivulets were running down the Mercedes’s windshield. He extended one hand toward the driver’s window, the other holding up two filthy fingers — two dollars.